Jeffery Deaver: Praying for Sleep

Ridgeton was a town that tragedy rarely touched and premeditated violence, never.

So tonight when Lis found that the kitchen door, latticed with squares of turquoise bottle glass, was wide open, she was more irritated than uneasy. She paused, the wine bottle in her hand slowly swinging to a stop. A faint trapezoid of amber light spread onto the lawn at Lis’s feet.

She stepped around the thicket of lilacs and glanced into the driveway. No cars.

The wind, she concluded.

Stepping inside, she set the bottle on the butcher-block island and made a perfunctory search of the downstairs. No evidence of fat raccoons or curious skunks. She stood still for a moment listening for sounds within the house. Hearing nothing, Lis put the kettle on the stove then crouched to forage through the cabinet that contained the tea and coffee. Just as she placed her hand on the box of rose-hip tea, a shadow fell over her. She stood, gasping, and found herself looking into a pair of cautious hazel eyes.

The woman was about thirty-five. She had a black jacket over her arm and wore a loose-fitting white satin blouse, a short, shimmery skirt, and lace-up boots with short heels. Over her shoulder was a backpack.

Lis swallowed and found her hand quivering. The two women faced each other for a moment, silent. It was Lis who leaned forward quickly and embraced the younger woman. “Portia.”

The woman unslung the backpack and dropped it on the island, next to the wine bottle.

“Hello, Lis.”

There was a moment of thick silence. Lis said, “I didn’t… I mean, I thought you were going to call when you got to the station. We’d pretty much decided you weren’t coming. I called you and got your machine. Well, it’s good to see you.” She heard the nervous out-pouring of her words and fell silent.

“I got a ride. Figured, why bother them?”

“It wouldn’t have been a bother.”

“Where were you guys? I looked upstairs.”

Lis didn’t speak for a moment but merely stared at the young woman’s face, her blond hair-exactly Lis’s shade-held back by a black headband. Portia frowned and repeated her question.

“Oh, we’re out by the lake. It’s a strange night, isn’t it? Indian summer. In November. Have you eaten?”

“No, nothing. I had brunch at three. Lee stayed over last night and we slept late.”

“Come on outside. Owen’s out there. You’ll have some wine.”

“No, really. Nothing.”

They headed back down the path, thick silence filling the short distance between them. Lis asked about the train ride.

“Late but it got here.”

“Who’d you get a ride with”

“Some guy. I think I went to high school with his son. He kept talking about Bobbie. Like I should know who Bobbie was if he didn’t give me his last name.”

“Bobbie Kelso. He’s your age. His father’s tall, bald?”

“I think,” Portia said absently, looking out over the black lake.

Lis watched her eyes. “It’s been so long since you’ve been here.”

Portia gave a sound that might have been a laugh or a sniffle. They walked the rest of the way to the patio in silence.

“Welcome,” Owen called, standing up. He kissed his sister-in-law’s cheek. “We’d about given up on you.”

“Yeah, well, one thing after another. Didn’t get a chance to call. Sorry.”

“No problem. We’re flexible out here in the country. Have some wine.”

“She got a ride with Irv Kelso,” Lis said. Then she pointed to a lawn chair. “Sit down. I’ll open another bottle. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

But Portia didn’t sit. “No thanks. It’s still early enough, isn’t it? Why don’t we get the dirty work over with?”

In the ensuing silence Lis looked from her sister to her husband then back again. “Well…”

Portia persisted, “Unless it’d be a hassle.”

Owen shook his head. “Not really.”

Lis hesitated. “You don’t want to sit for a few minutes? We’ve got all tomorrow.”

“Naw, let’s just do it.” She laughed. “Like the ad says.”

Owen turned toward the younger woman. His face was in shadow and Lis couldn’t see his expression. “If you want. Everything’s in the den.”

He led the way and Portia, with a glance at her older sister, followed.

Lis remained on the patio for a moment. She blew the candle out and picked it up. Then she too walked to the house, preceded by sparkling dew lifted off the grass and flung from the tips of her boots, while above her in the night sky Cassiopeia grew indistinct, then dark, then invisible behind a wedge of black cloud.

He walked along the gritty driveway, passing through pools of light beneath the antiquated, hoopy lamps sprouting from the uneven granite wall. From high above, a woman known to him only as Patient 223-81 keened breathlessly, mourning the loss of something only she understood.

He paused at a barred wooden door, beside the loading dock. Into a silver plastic box-incongruous in this nearly medieval setting-the middle-aged man inserted a plastic card and flung the door open. Inside, a half dozen men and women, wearing white jackets or blue jumpsuits, glanced at him. Then they looked away uncomfortably.

A white-jacketed young doctor with nervous black hair and large lips stepped quickly to his side, whispering, “It’s worse than we thought.”

“Worse, Peter?” Dr. Ronald Adler asked vacantly as he stared at the gurney. “I don’t know about that. I expect pretty bad.”

He brushed his uncombed sandy-gray hair out of his eyes and touched a long finger to a thin, fleshy jowl as he looked down at the body. The corpse was huge and bald and had a time-smeared tattoo on the right biceps. A reddish discoloration encircled the massive neck. His back was as dark with sunken blood as his face was pale.

Adler motioned to the young doctor. “Let’s go to my office. Why are all these people here? Shoo them out! My office. Now.”

Vanishing through a narrow doorway the two men walked down the dim corridors, the only sounds their footsteps and a faint wail, which might have been either Patient 223-81 or the wind that gushed through the gaps in the building, which had been constructed a century ago. The walls of Adler’s office were made from the same red granite used throughout the hospital but he was its director so the walls were paneled. Because this was a state hospital, however, the wormwood was fake and badly warped. The office seemed like that of a bail bondsman or an ambulance-chasing lawyer.

Adler flicked the light on and tossed his overcoat onto a button-studded couch. The summons tonight had found him between the legs of his wife and he’d leapt off the bed and dressed hastily. He noticed now that he’d forgotten his belt, and his slacks hung below his moderate belly. This embarrassed him and he quickly sat at his desk chair. He gazed momentarily at the phone as if perplexed it wasn’t ringing.

To the young man, his assistant, Adler said, “Let’s have it, Doctor. Don’t hover. Sit down and tell me.”

“Details are pretty sketchy. He’s built like Callaghan.” Peter Grimes aimed his knobby hair toward the body in the loading dock. “We think he-”

Adler interrupted. “And he is…?”

“The one who escaped? Michael Hrubek. Number 458- 94.”

“Go on.” Adler fanned his fingers gingerly and Grimes placed a battered white file folder in front of the director.

“Hrubek, it seems-”

“He was the big fellow? Didn’t think he was a trouble-maker.”

“Never was. Until today.” Grimes kept retracting his lips like a fish chewing water and exposing little, even teeth. Adler found this repugnant and lowered his face to the file. The young doctor continued, “He shaved his head to look like Callaghan. Stole a razor to do it. Then he dyed his face blue. Broke a pen and mixed the ink with-” Adler’s eyes swung to Grimes with a look of either anger or bewilderment. The young man said quickly, “Then he climbed into the freezer for an hour. Anybody else would’ve died. Just before the coroner’s boys came by to pick up Callaghan, Hrubek hid the corpse and climbed into his body bag. The orderlies looked inside, saw a cold, blue body and-”